


Burden of Dark

by stew (julie)



Category: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Comics)
Genre: Darkness, Doomed Relationship, M/M, Sex Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1992-05-10
Updated: 1992-05-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:34:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22640311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julie/pseuds/stew
Summary: You want to know how I met the Batman? He busted my pimp, Ricardo. It was incredibly bad timing.
Relationships: Bruce Wayne/Original Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	Burden of Dark

**Author's Note:**

> **Notes:** This is set in the _Batman_ universe originally created by Bob Kane, but is specifically inspired by Frank Miller’s macabre and splendid comic book series _Batman: The Dark Knight Returns_ , and to a related article (or review?) in the magazine _THE FACE_. 
> 
> Initial responses to this fic were very much “love it or hate it”, so please be warned you may well be sane enough to hate it and I wouldn’t blame you in the least. I mean… revisiting my old fic makes me realize how very many issues I’ve been working through!
> 
> **Warnings:** A rather dark Dark Knight. A young sex-worker (who is at least eighteen). A “lonely ever after” ending. 
> 
> **First published:** in my zine Homosapien #2 on 10 May 1992.

# Burden of Dark 

♦

You want to know how I met the Batman? He busted my pimp, Ricardo. Not for pimping; for one of the messy little money-making rackets he used to get into. It was incredibly bad timing. This other low life was trying to muscle into Ricardo’s turf, which included me, and I wasn’t so keen on this new guy’s methods of operation. 

Anyway, one evening I walked into Ricardo’s apartment, hoping to find some cash or at least something I could sell, and there was Batman poking around for clues or evidence or whatever. He didn’t even give me a second glance. 

‘What the fuck are you doing? This is private property.’ I waited for an answer, but his back was turned, his huge shoulders brooding underneath the drooping black wings. ‘Now I _know_ you need a search warrant…’ 

‘I’m not a cop,’ he said heavily. ‘I issue my own warrants.’ 

‘That so?’ I just stood there staring at him some more, until finally he whirled on me. 

‘Have you got business here, kid? Or do you want me to bust your ass for solicitation?’ 

‘ _Who’s_ soliciting?’ I asked with a pretense of innocence. 

‘Vagrancy,’ he snarled. 

‘Are you serious? What’s your problem?’ He stepped closer, his bulk intimidating. When I lowered my eyes, the bat symbol on his chest hovered menacingly before me. 

He grabbed my chin in one gloved hand and forcibly tilted my head back. ‘ _You’re_ the problem,’ he seethed. ‘Get out of my way, trash.’ 

‘Hell, no. I’ve more right to be here than you.’

‘You’re busted,’ he spat, reaching for his bat-cuffs. 

I just smiled. We both stayed exactly where we were, so his long arms had to reach around either side of me to fasten my wrists behind my back. He was bent over so that his face was right beside mine. I turned to him with my lips by his ear, and whispered, ‘Want to trick a deal?’ 

Abruptly still, he snarled through clenched teeth. ‘What?’ 

I didn’t know whether to be surprised or not to find he’d never heard the expression before. ‘It’s a special offer we make the cops around here. You know – I give you whatever you want, you let me go.’

‘I’m not a cop,’ he repeated, breath hissing, ‘and I’m not interested in your deals.’ But as he straightened, his hands ran up my arms, my whole body flexing in reaction. I suddenly wanted to make that deal very badly.

‘You can leave the cuffs on,’ I whispered. 

Growling, he pushed himself away, sending me clumsily back against the wall by the door. ‘Are you alleging corruption in the police force? The vice squad?’ 

‘ _Me_ sing? Are you crazy?’ 

‘Talk or I’ll bust you.’ 

‘For what? You’ve got nothing on me.’ 

‘Then what was all that about?’ he asked with barely leashed impatience. ‘What was the deal for?’ 

I shrugged. ‘Haven’t you ever been propositioned before? Holy lust, Batman,’ I quipped, ‘all I wanted –’ 

His fist met my chin, all the mad force of his anger behind it, cracking my head back against the wood of the door. I blacked out for a moment and, on waking, found that I was sliding down to the floor. Batman tried to wrench the door open, but my semi-conscious weight kept it closed. A well-aimed boot in my ribs made me struggle out of the way. And then he was gone, the black wingtips gliding across me a moment later. 

♦

The sun was setting by the time he came back. Opening the door carefully, he peered into the dimness to see if I was still there. Of course I was – I’d barely managed to crawl a few feet in the general direction of the phone. Though who I was intending to call was a puzzle. 

He knelt beside me and gingerly probed my jaw and skull and ribs. ‘Nothing broken,’ he at last pronounced. His voice was gruff with guilt, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes. He rolled me over to unlock the bat-cuffs, then carried me to the bed. 

I lay back on the soft mattress with relief. ‘Water,’ I croaked out. 

He fumbled around in the kitchen, casting huge shadows through the doorway. When he came back, he helped me sit up, his arm firm across my back and neck, and he lifted a glass to my lips. Cool wet heaven. And then I sank back and dozed for a while.

♦

His silhouette was as still as a piece of the night. 

It might have all been a dream, an illusion, but then he shattered the city’s constant rumbling silence. ‘I’ll take you home with me. Until you’re recovered.’ 

‘All right.’ My heart leapt. I had survived beyond the law and the demands of respectable society since I was seven, just over half my life. And this twilight hero of Gotham City had been in my dreams and nightmares the whole time. It was only recently that decent citizens started questioning their trust in this lone vigilante, had started to realize he belonged more to my side of the world than theirs. 

Anyhow, the heat was up with Ricardo out of action – I wanted out of there, to someplace safe, and in a hurry. 

I was lifted carefully into his arms, and he drove me away in the bat-mobile. 

♦

He soon regretted it. ‘My identity must remain a secret.’ 

‘Well, it’s too late. I _know_ this is Bruce Wayne’s estate.’ 

‘Don’t think yourself too clever – I will protect my anonymity by any means necessary.’ 

‘So let me stay here,’ I suggested. ‘Give me what I want, and I’ll keep my mouth shut.’ 

He didn’t ask me what I wanted; he just stood there seething as I wandered around, my curiosity getting the better of my instinct for survival. ‘I shouldn’t have brought you here,’ he said. 

‘Well, neither of us would have wanted me in a public hospital, would we?’ 

‘Who would care that I hit a two-bit whore?’ 

‘And kicked me in the ribs, while I was lying handcuffed on the floor. And left me there alone. And you didn’t even have any proof to justify your accusations.’ 

‘You’re not so badly hurt.’ 

‘Want to feel this lump on my head?’ But then I was distracted by framed photos of two guys around my own age. ‘Your two Robins? They were your wards, right?’ 

‘Put them down!’ he rapped out, taking one long stride towards me, and then apparently thinking better of it. 

‘The second one – he was just a petty crim, eh? That’s what the word on the street is.’ 

‘He was a fine boy,’ Batman grated out. ‘It’s nothing to do with you.’ 

‘Did you love them? Like, you’ve got to expect gossip; the whole set-up is so obvious, it’s corny. The word out is –’ 

‘Shut up! How dare you accuse me with this filth? They were fine decent boys – and there are many criminals behind bars due to their selfless dedication.’ 

I stared at him, flaunting my street-wise skepticism. He was literally quivering with his rage. It was far, far too easy to goad him.

‘You know where your room is,’ he said. ‘Go there now, and stay there.’ 

‘Or…?’ I taunted. 

‘Or,’ he said levelly, pacing closer, ‘you may wake up tomorrow morning back on the streets, with worse than a couple of bruises.’ 

I threw him a defiant look, turned on my heel, and walked out of the room and down the corridor. I opened the door to the bedroom he’d shown me – but then crept back light as air to watch Batman. 

He held the first Robin’s photo, and bent low over it, shoulders sagging, batwings broken. And he whispered, ‘Did I love you, then, my little monkey wrench?’ There might have been tears behind the mask. Batman reached out to gently touch the other boy’s photo. ‘And you, Jason?’ 

There was silence for a long moment, but then he threw back his head and groaned. ‘No – he poisons my memories.’

♦

I lay awake on funereal white sheets, dark drapes shadowing the room beyond the brass railings at the foot of the bed. I lay naked, bruises purple on my pale skin. I could not rest. 

I felt sure the place was haunted. 

♦

It was the darkest hour, the cold hour before dawn, when he came to me. He stood in his shadows, staring at my nakedness. When I sat up a little, knees cocked, he suddenly swept into action. 

The bat-rope flew, and wrapped around my left ankle. He walked closer, taking in the slack. I wasn’t going anywhere – not that I wanted to. Staring at me, mouth a determined and disgusted grimace, he stalked around the foot of the bed and tied the rope firmly to the bedpost to my right. 

Continuing his slow prowl, he came to stand by me. He leaned over and placed one gloved hand on my hip, pushed me over to lay on my side. And Batman lay behind me, pulling me back into his arms. 

His hands quickly, impersonally explored me, finding my full erection with no surprise or interest. Settling me more conveniently against him, he fumbled with his clothing for a moment, and then I felt his cock hard against my buttocks. 

Business-like, he pushed close, insisting on immediate entry. Hand hard on my hip, he broke through into me. He voiced an agonized groan. And with only the head of his cock within me, my flesh and muscle constricted around him, Batman was shaking, was crying out in protest at his impending orgasm. 

It crashed over him, the quakes forcing him further into me, his spunk easing the way. Afterwards, he lay there gasping. 

Then he was withdrawing, turning me onto my back, moving over me. His teeth nipped at me as he slid down my body, his clothing rough against my skin. His wings settled back over the brass railings. Batman nipped at the skin over my hip bones, then bit hard enough to draw blood. I didn’t care. 

His mouth moved hungrily down to the inside of my thighs, his teeth and tongue running over the tender skin in ways that tickled and hurt and excited all at once. 

He took my cock into his mouth, sucking painfully hard. There was a time when I feared there was no way I could climax for him but, almost before the thought was finished, I was exploding into him, his hands on my hips bruising as they contained my bucking reactions. 

Moving while I still shook in response, Batman knelt, again releasing his erect cock from his bat-suit. He lifted my legs so that my ankles hooked on his shoulders, and he entered me, fully this time. Sheathed within my body, he began to thrust, his thighs rippling beneath the grey material, his teeth clenched, his wings floating behind him.

I came again, don’t ask me how or why. Maybe it was simply the sight of him fucking my ass, his mouth opening wide as he gave a choked cry before he climaxed. 

And then, and then, and then he was gone. 

♦

I found Bruce Wayne sitting down to a late breakfast that morning. Dressed in tweeds, hair slicked back, peeling an orange with long civilized fingers; there was nothing about him that hinted he was the Batman whose thigh muscles rippled as he fucked me during the dark night. But as I looked closer, his tense discomfort betrayed him. 

‘Good morning,’ he said formally. 

‘Hi.’ I sat at the table, with a chair between us. There was a place set for me down the other end of the long table, but I ignored it. 

‘Would you tell me your name?’ 

I glanced at him, deliberately looked away. ‘What would you like to call me?’ And he knew what I was suggesting, it was there between us: _Robin_. 

For a moment he stared, furious. If he’d been Batman, maybe he would have hit me again. As it was, he contained it all – just – behind an expression that was as much a mask as the Batman’s hood. ‘I would like to call you,’ he said at last, biting off each word, ‘by your given name.’ 

‘Lots of people give me names,’ I said carelessly. But I had won that round. I shifted to sprawl one leg over the arm of the chair. I’d pushed him plenty. ‘Jesus,’ I told him, using Ricardo’s Latino pronunciation because I hated it said the Christian way my mother had intended. 

Bruce Wayne nodded. ‘Jesus. Would you care for breakfast?’ 

‘Coffee.’ But I cast a lingering eye over his plate of bacon and eggs. Usually I couldn’t stomach food this early in the day but, with Ricardo even more unreliable than usual, money and therefore food had been irregular blessings lately. 

‘Alfred!’ he called. And some distinguished old gent appeared at the door. ‘This is Jesus, the young man who stayed here last night. Will you fetch him coffee, and perhaps some breakfast?’

‘Certainly. What would you like to eat, sir?’ 

It took me a moment to realize he was speaking to me. And another moment to listen to my belly grumble. ‘A bit of everything, thanks,’ I said cheerfully. Once Alfred had turned away, I stage-whispered to Bruce Wayne, ‘You never told him about us?’ Pretending to be scandalized.

He was silent for long moments, all pale and strained and wide-eyed. ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ he at last said faintly, clinging to some false sense of normality. 

I just smiled. Reassuringly, of course. 

♦

I wandered the echoing rooms of Bruce Wayne’s rambling mansion, getting totally lost. He had left me alone at the breakfast table, stalking away, running scared. Then Alfred was nowhere to be found, and there was no sign that anyone else lived or worked there. So I decided to amuse myself. 

The rooms were full of rich old furniture, most of it hidden under white sheets, none of it touched for years. The place would have been worth a fortune or ten, even if it did look like a museum. Maybe _because_ it looked like a museum.

And there was this lovely little silver figurine of an angel that made a comfortable weight in my jacket pocket. 

Amidst the musty quiet, I caught a hint of cool air. Air that had never been warmed by the sun. Air fresh and heavy from some underground lake. I carefully followed the wisp through twisting corridors and empty ballrooms, no longer interested in the velvet and porcelain. 

I found a door ajar, a plain door with stone steps beyond it leading down into the dark. And somehow I knew that the Batman’s feet had trodden there, his wingtips trailing along behind. So I followed him. 

The light from the open door didn’t reach far past the first turn. I felt my way carefully to each step, hands running along the rough walls to keep my balance. After a time, my eyes began to adjust to what had seemed total darkness, and I could make out the stairs immediately before me. 

Eventually I came to a passage that was perhaps a natural cave. I didn’t know which way to turn, until I heard something that might have been his wings brushing against the stone. I followed the sound, heart speeding up a beat. 

Other tunnels, caverns led every which way. There was the sound, sometimes close by, of a stream madly rushing or of water dripping into some more peaceful pool. But there was also a presence, waiting way ahead of me no matter how far I walked, casting restless looming shadows. Something that belonged here in the dark of the earth. Something that was rarely disturbed. 

‘Do not go any closer,’ the Batman whispered, and the words hung in the still air.

I whirled – he was behind me, wings floating as if on currents I could not feel. ‘I thought that was you,’ I explained hoarsely. 

‘No.’ He didn’t ask me what I was doing there, or tell me the obvious – that this was his deepest secret, not to be betrayed by the likes of me. ‘Come here,’ he said instead. 

When I crept closer, away from that being in the caves, he bent and gathered me up, his strong arms around my waist, mouth immediately settling on my throat. I let my head fall back, content to let him – no, eager to let him do whatever he would. 

And we fucked for a long hard while: up against the rock wall so that I was crushed and bruised; then as he lifted me in his arms like an offering; then wrestling together on the ground like creatures possessed. At the last, as he lifted me up in his arms again, his batwings beating behind and above us in slow strong rhythm, I could have sworn we were both hanging in the air. He cried out as if mortally wounded. There was an answer that might have been an echo or might have been the restless thing in the shadows. Then, in the aftermath, gravity claimed us. 

I clung to him within the embrace of his wings, refusing to let him go this time, and he held me with a weary fierceness. 

♦

He carried me back up to the house, found Alfred waiting in the corridor. I couldn’t tell if the old man was disapproving or even surprised. ‘Take care of him,’ the Batman said to Alfred. 

When he let me down to the floor, I stood between them, tired and weak. I was dimly aware that my clothes and skin were a mess of dirt and blood. The smugness of my smile was probably way out of place. 

‘Yes, sir,’ said Alfred. 

‘Clean him up. Give him money, whatever he wants. Then take him home.’ 

I looked up at the Batman. What I could see of his face was a horrible combination of shame and despair, fear and denial. He returned my gaze for a moment, full of an intense and unbearable sadness – then he turned to disappear down the stone stairway again. 

‘Hey! I want to stay _here!’_ I called out. He paused for a moment, just beyond the door, though he didn’t turn back to me. ‘I want to be with you.’ 

The door closed, and he was on the other side of it. 

‘No!’ I yelled in ragged protest. I stumbled after him, but this time the door was locked fast. I slumped against it, slid to the floor, exhausted and confused, angry and full of lonely need. I thought I would die of the frustration and sadness. 

But after a while Alfred helped me up, and did all that he had been asked to. I was back in Ricardo’s apartment by sunset, with a roll of hundred dollar bills in my pocket along with the little silver angel. 

And I never saw the Batman again.

♦


End file.
